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We're all living that Asian family joke. Parents spend their whole lives waiting for their kids to thank you. Kids spend their whole lives waiting for their p

We're all living that Asian family joke. Parents spend their whole lives waiting for their kids to thank you. Kids spend their whole lives waiting for their parent to say "I'm sorry." That said I've never felt that way about my Mom and Dad. I've faults and problems a plenty but I wouldn't ascribe any of that on them; indeed the best things about me seem to clearly come from them and the worst are just as clearly things they suggested I not do. What are you going to do though, even if all that wasn't true they'd still love me and I'd still love them.

rogerclark 5y ago
In therapy circles and attachment theory land, this is exactly what's supposed to happen when you receive "good enough parenting". Good enough parenting means your parents actually tried and either worked through any of their issues preventing them from giving care to their children, or didn't have those issues in the first place. So the idea goes, you end up developing a relationship based on mutual respect, love, and level-headedness. The problem is, not everyone is lucky enough to receive that kind of childhood care, even though it seems like it should be universal. Lots of people are massively fucked up and still have kids anyway, either accidentally or otherwise. And then their kids are put at a massive disadvantage in life and in human relationships. It's usually difficult for people with decent upbringings to even conceptualize why a child might willingly remain estranged from their family. But there are a lot of people out there with really good reasons to do that.
- huge87 5y ago
  > It's usually difficult for people with decent upbringings to even conceptualize why a child might willingly remain estranged from their family. But there are a lot of people out there with really good reasons to do that. This sums up how I feel about this topic. I read all these accounts of how people's perceptions of parent-child relationships change after they have kids, or how there's still mutual love between them and their parents despite so-and-so, and I understand. I am well into adulthood with a stable marriage and career; I've been to therapy, and done all things reasonable to heal from whatever it is I came from. By all accounts I've been pretty successful on that front. But goddammit, when I think about my parents, I move between seething resentment and gratitude that I decided to cut contact. And this is an improvement. As you say, people with good enough upbringings can't conceptualize why a child might remain estranged from their family; I'd wager they impose perceptions of their own (good enough) parents when making that judgment.
- sjg007 5y ago
  I agree, and you can see this pass down through the generations. It's even possible to recognize it in yourself and still have trouble because you don't know what else to do. So called default mode behaviors etc...
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  > "Lots of people are massively fucked up and still have kids anyway, either accidentally or otherwise. And then their kids are put at a massive disadvantage in life and in human relationships." This is an interesting one, and in direct contradiction to the adage: "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.” My life experience agrees, tough times mostly produce emotionally damaged people
  - Cerium 5y ago
    I'm not sure it is contradiction, both the strong and weak alike can be emotionally damaged. Many see dictators, or want to be dictators as strong men, yet they are often obviously damaged people.
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      Surely this is a contradiction in terms? A strong boxer who is missing a leg is a weak boxer. I don't think dictators are a good example, you only see the PR spin, it's not like you get a chance to meet Putin in person to realise he is actually clueless about whats happening in his own government.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    This reminds me of a friend who has gone through some bad life experiences. She once told me that "everything happens for a reason" is the kind of garbage only said by people who have never had bad things happen to them. Yes, dealing with adversity can teach us things and make us stronger. But there are limits, and adversity can also do permanent mental and emotional damage. The latter outcome is way more common than some people would like to believe.
    - throwaway803453 5y ago
      Repeating annoying phrases that casually dismiss suffering seem to be human nature. It likely irritated Voltaire so much he wrote the tragic novel Candide in 1759. In that book the phrase is "everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds" is thoughtlessly repeated during times of unspeakable cruelty and horror.
samatman 5y ago
Yes, but for many of us in the West, without the tradition common to East and South Asians of reciprocal obligation. This used to be nigh unto a human universal: your parents raise you up from a helpless infant to adulthood, and this obliges you to love and care for them for the rest of their lives. I'm as deracinated Westerner as it comes, and yet I'm fairly traditional in this regard. I can think of three acceptable reasons to estrange from parents: sexual abuse, severe physical abuse, and the parents disowning the child. Even the second one leaves a lot of room for reconciliation, since they can't hurt you anymore. I mean, easy for me to say, my parents easily earned a B+ and I was able to work out my teen angst with my father by my mid twenties. Still: casually abandoning "honor thy father and thy mother" doesn't seem to be working out very well for us.
- tolbish 5y ago
  But mental/emotional abuse and neglect are perfectly fine? Those can be just as irreparably damaging as physical abuse.
  - emptysongglass 5y ago
    This is what caused me to cut the cord with my parents. My father is a massive criminal, got himself into prison for a large part of my formative years, never said I love you. Mother is untreated borderline, was emotionally abusive my entire life. I spent years of my adulthood trying to find a way to reconcile with them and the conclusion I came to was it's not your burden to suffer for your parents' sins. They will change or won't change of their own volition. But you deserve to survive and thrive in kindness. So much of ourselves is steeped in the company we keep. Choose the company that fosters the better, kinder, wiser you.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    Ex: I have a (former) coworker who told me his life story. He's homosexual and his parents sent him multiple times to gay conversion therapy. Learning to accept himself for who he is required him to leave his parents: because they would not accept a homosexual child. No sexual abuse or physical abuse in this story, but its pretty clear that he's healthier for leaving his parents. IIRC, he's an only child as well. I'm not sure if he'll be willing to take care of his parents as they get older.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
For me personally there are aspects I don't like about myself that are clearly a result of how my parents raised me. As a much younger man I was bitter about this, but I came to realize that my parents are human and made some mistakes, but over all did sacrifice a lot for my and my sister's well being. I also realized we didn't do a lot to make raising us any easier. So rather than remain resentful towards them, I just let it go and started working to fix the things about me I didn't like.
- morpheos137 5y ago
  >did sacrifice. On the one hand I agree children and young adults can be overly entitled or have too high expectations for their human parents on the other I think that framing raising children as a sacrifice is wrong. It is kind of the core point of biological life. In past times children were seen as a blessing now some times in the west they are seen as a burden. This inversion is part of the larger narcissism epidemic distorting modern society IMHO.
  - oxymoran 5y ago
    I agree. My parents held their “sacrifice” over our head and I don’t think I really got over it and I think it’s why I never wanted kids until fairly recently. I used to respond to that by saying that I never asked them conceive me in the first place which made me feel like poo. Now being a parent myself, I can see why parents would feel like they made a sacrifice, but I am never going to hold that “sacrifice” over my child’s head because I also see how that felt terrible as a kid.
    - ponow 5y ago
      Whether or not it made you feel like "poo" doesn't change that responsibility for a physical action lies with the people initiating it.
    - fyfgfjgfy78 5y ago
      My parents did same thing, they made parenting seems like such a horrible thing. Made me wonder why anyone would ever have any kids. I never wanted any kids until my wife convinced me after 10 years. Now I know parenting is hard if you do it as religious duty to your god, family, country etc. But if you choose to become parent, like when you choose to pick up a new project or hobby, it is pure joy, even the hard parts. Yes you will be tired running marathon, but you will not say that you made a sacrifice. And unless you are trying to monetize you hobbies, you don't expect anything back.
mleonhard 5y ago
Your comment is a humblebrag. :( My parents modeled and explicitly taught me a judgmental mindset. It became my worst fault. Can you feel the judgement in this comment? Thanks, Dad & Mom.
- gpt5 5y ago
  The moment you stop blaming others on your faults is the moment you'll start improving.
  - anp 5y ago
    It's very difficult to improve oneself without understanding the mechanisms, context, and history that contribute to one's behavior.
  - mleonhard 5y ago
    Why do you assume that I'm not improving? I started improving after I took a free 10-day meditation course (the Goenka one), four years ago. At the course, I gained the ability to notice changes in my emotions and mental state. Suddenly, I could see when my mind switches to a judgmental attitude. I began intentionally trying to prevent the switch. I also intentionally restrain myself if I do switch into that mode. Changing mental habits is difficult and worthwhile. I have improved a lot in this area in 4 years. Two years ago, I realized that my parents taught me to be a judgmental jerk. Since that time, I have considerably reduced the bad mental habit. People close to me confirm this. Therefore, my experience contradicts your statement.
    - ponow 5y ago
      Despite my half century and having repeatedly listened to and ruminated about "being judgemental", I can't fully fault "making judgements", for without judgement we have no comparison of worse vs better, and without that we have no basis for improvement. At issue mostly is _hasty_ judgement, uninformed, and without humility of all the potential and unknowable errors in judgement. But we definitely must judge, or stagnate.
dpweb 5y ago
As someone who was abandoned as a child and still maintains a pretty good relationship w both parents, I'm sure they are oblivious to the effect that had on me as a child. Nor are they willing to talk about it now. They feel what's done is done and in the past, and don't want the awkwardness of that conversation. It's cool, but sometimes you wanna cry for that child. As an adult, I've heard the mistake is looking at what happened to you through a childs eyes. Ya can't really ever let it go.
- sjg007 5y ago
  You are allowed to and should grieve for that child. There's therapy based on attachment theory where you learn to how to be the parent to that (inner) child.
xwolfi 5y ago
I think the grand reveal is when you slap your own kid the first time :D I see myself talking to my daughter with the same autoritative tone my dad used on me that I found so "unfair omg". And see her progress from monkey to little girl as a result :D Parenthood succeed when your kids complain about your failures, as Francoise Dolto (perhaps not a role model herself) liked to write.

rogerclark 5y ago

In therapy circles and attachment theory land, this is exactly what's supposed to happen when you receive "good enough parenting". Good enough parenting means your parents actually tried and either worked through any of their issues preventing them from giving care to their children, or didn't have those issues in the first place. So the idea goes, you end up developing a relationship based on mutual respect, love, and level-headedness. The problem is, not everyone is lucky enough to receive that kind of childhood care, even though it seems like it should be universal. Lots of people are massively fucked up and still have kids anyway, either accidentally or otherwise. And then their kids are put at a massive disadvantage in life and in human relationships. It's usually difficult for people with decent upbringings to even conceptualize why a child might willingly remain estranged from their family. But there are a lot of people out there with really good reasons to do that.

huge87 5y ago
> It's usually difficult for people with decent upbringings to even conceptualize why a child might willingly remain estranged from their family. But there are a lot of people out there with really good reasons to do that. This sums up how I feel about this topic. I read all these accounts of how people's perceptions of parent-child relationships change after they have kids, or how there's still mutual love between them and their parents despite so-and-so, and I understand. I am well into adulthood with a stable marriage and career; I've been to therapy, and done all things reasonable to heal from whatever it is I came from. By all accounts I've been pretty successful on that front. But goddammit, when I think about my parents, I move between seething resentment and gratitude that I decided to cut contact. And this is an improvement. As you say, people with good enough upbringings can't conceptualize why a child might remain estranged from their family; I'd wager they impose perceptions of their own (good enough) parents when making that judgment.
sjg007 5y ago
I agree, and you can see this pass down through the generations. It's even possible to recognize it in yourself and still have trouble because you don't know what else to do. So called default mode behaviors etc...
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
> "Lots of people are massively fucked up and still have kids anyway, either accidentally or otherwise. And then their kids are put at a massive disadvantage in life and in human relationships." This is an interesting one, and in direct contradiction to the adage: "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.” My life experience agrees, tough times mostly produce emotionally damaged people
- Cerium 5y ago
  I'm not sure it is contradiction, both the strong and weak alike can be emotionally damaged. Many see dictators, or want to be dictators as strong men, yet they are often obviously damaged people.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    Surely this is a contradiction in terms? A strong boxer who is missing a leg is a weak boxer. I don't think dictators are a good example, you only see the PR spin, it's not like you get a chance to meet Putin in person to realise he is actually clueless about whats happening in his own government.
- kelnos 5y ago
  This reminds me of a friend who has gone through some bad life experiences. She once told me that "everything happens for a reason" is the kind of garbage only said by people who have never had bad things happen to them. Yes, dealing with adversity can teach us things and make us stronger. But there are limits, and adversity can also do permanent mental and emotional damage. The latter outcome is way more common than some people would like to believe.
  - throwaway803453 5y ago
    Repeating annoying phrases that casually dismiss suffering seem to be human nature. It likely irritated Voltaire so much he wrote the tragic novel Candide in 1759. In that book the phrase is "everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds" is thoughtlessly repeated during times of unspeakable cruelty and horror.

samatman 5y ago

Yes, but for many of us in the West, without the tradition common to East and South Asians of reciprocal obligation. This used to be nigh unto a human universal: your parents raise you up from a helpless infant to adulthood, and this obliges you to love and care for them for the rest of their lives. I'm as deracinated Westerner as it comes, and yet I'm fairly traditional in this regard. I can think of three acceptable reasons to estrange from parents: sexual abuse, severe physical abuse, and the parents disowning the child. Even the second one leaves a lot of room for reconciliation, since they can't hurt you anymore. I mean, easy for me to say, my parents easily earned a B+ and I was able to work out my teen angst with my father by my mid twenties. Still: casually abandoning "honor thy father and thy mother" doesn't seem to be working out very well for us.

tolbish 5y ago
But mental/emotional abuse and neglect are perfectly fine? Those can be just as irreparably damaging as physical abuse.
- emptysongglass 5y ago
  This is what caused me to cut the cord with my parents. My father is a massive criminal, got himself into prison for a large part of my formative years, never said I love you. Mother is untreated borderline, was emotionally abusive my entire life. I spent years of my adulthood trying to find a way to reconcile with them and the conclusion I came to was it's not your burden to suffer for your parents' sins. They will change or won't change of their own volition. But you deserve to survive and thrive in kindness. So much of ourselves is steeped in the company we keep. Choose the company that fosters the better, kinder, wiser you.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  Ex: I have a (former) coworker who told me his life story. He's homosexual and his parents sent him multiple times to gay conversion therapy. Learning to accept himself for who he is required him to leave his parents: because they would not accept a homosexual child. No sexual abuse or physical abuse in this story, but its pretty clear that he's healthier for leaving his parents. IIRC, he's an only child as well. I'm not sure if he'll be willing to take care of his parents as they get older.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

For me personally there are aspects I don't like about myself that are clearly a result of how my parents raised me. As a much younger man I was bitter about this, but I came to realize that my parents are human and made some mistakes, but over all did sacrifice a lot for my and my sister's well being. I also realized we didn't do a lot to make raising us any easier. So rather than remain resentful towards them, I just let it go and started working to fix the things about me I didn't like.

morpheos137 5y ago
>did sacrifice. On the one hand I agree children and young adults can be overly entitled or have too high expectations for their human parents on the other I think that framing raising children as a sacrifice is wrong. It is kind of the core point of biological life. In past times children were seen as a blessing now some times in the west they are seen as a burden. This inversion is part of the larger narcissism epidemic distorting modern society IMHO.
- oxymoran 5y ago
  I agree. My parents held their “sacrifice” over our head and I don’t think I really got over it and I think it’s why I never wanted kids until fairly recently. I used to respond to that by saying that I never asked them conceive me in the first place which made me feel like poo. Now being a parent myself, I can see why parents would feel like they made a sacrifice, but I am never going to hold that “sacrifice” over my child’s head because I also see how that felt terrible as a kid.
  - ponow 5y ago
    Whether or not it made you feel like "poo" doesn't change that responsibility for a physical action lies with the people initiating it.
  - fyfgfjgfy78 5y ago
    My parents did same thing, they made parenting seems like such a horrible thing. Made me wonder why anyone would ever have any kids. I never wanted any kids until my wife convinced me after 10 years. Now I know parenting is hard if you do it as religious duty to your god, family, country etc. But if you choose to become parent, like when you choose to pick up a new project or hobby, it is pure joy, even the hard parts. Yes you will be tired running marathon, but you will not say that you made a sacrifice. And unless you are trying to monetize you hobbies, you don't expect anything back.

mleonhard 5y ago

Your comment is a humblebrag. :( My parents modeled and explicitly taught me a judgmental mindset. It became my worst fault. Can you feel the judgement in this comment? Thanks, Dad & Mom.

gpt5 5y ago
The moment you stop blaming others on your faults is the moment you'll start improving.
- anp 5y ago
  It's very difficult to improve oneself without understanding the mechanisms, context, and history that contribute to one's behavior.
- mleonhard 5y ago
  Why do you assume that I'm not improving? I started improving after I took a free 10-day meditation course (the Goenka one), four years ago. At the course, I gained the ability to notice changes in my emotions and mental state. Suddenly, I could see when my mind switches to a judgmental attitude. I began intentionally trying to prevent the switch. I also intentionally restrain myself if I do switch into that mode. Changing mental habits is difficult and worthwhile. I have improved a lot in this area in 4 years. Two years ago, I realized that my parents taught me to be a judgmental jerk. Since that time, I have considerably reduced the bad mental habit. People close to me confirm this. Therefore, my experience contradicts your statement.
  - ponow 5y ago
    Despite my half century and having repeatedly listened to and ruminated about "being judgemental", I can't fully fault "making judgements", for without judgement we have no comparison of worse vs better, and without that we have no basis for improvement. At issue mostly is _hasty_ judgement, uninformed, and without humility of all the potential and unknowable errors in judgement. But we definitely must judge, or stagnate.

dpweb 5y ago

As someone who was abandoned as a child and still maintains a pretty good relationship w both parents, I'm sure they are oblivious to the effect that had on me as a child. Nor are they willing to talk about it now. They feel what's done is done and in the past, and don't want the awkwardness of that conversation. It's cool, but sometimes you wanna cry for that child. As an adult, I've heard the mistake is looking at what happened to you through a childs eyes. Ya can't really ever let it go.

sjg007 5y ago
You are allowed to and should grieve for that child. There's therapy based on attachment theory where you learn to how to be the parent to that (inner) child.

xwolfi 5y ago

I think the grand reveal is when you slap your own kid the first time :D I see myself talking to my daughter with the same autoritative tone my dad used on me that I found so "unfair omg". And see her progress from monkey to little girl as a result :D Parenthood succeed when your kids complain about your failures, as Francoise Dolto (perhaps not a role model herself) liked to write.